EDGE: A Ride In The Sun (Edge series Book 34)

by George G. Gilman

  "Don't shoot me, don't shoot me!" Sean Murphy shrieked.

  This as the impassive Edge looked at him and aimed the Winchester at him, saw him kneeling on the ground in the settling dust-cloud, hands clasped in front of his chest as if praying.

  "Don't listen to him!" Green shrieked. "Blast the sonofabitch to hell, the murderin' bastard."

  "If he killed anyone, it ain't nothing to me," the half-breed drawled, and canted the rifle back to his shoulder.

  He started to turn away, then did a double-take. The dust motes had almost all settled now. He could see Sean's Colt lying on the ground—out of reach of the man. But the matching gun which had spun out of Pat­rick's hand was nowhere to be seen.

  Sean began to get to his feet, lips and limbs quiver­ing. Hands down now. Too far down. His shoulders were hunched as he reached between his thighs.

  "No," he whimpered as he realized the slitted blue eyes of the half-breed had spotted his play.

  But he was committed to the act of bringing out, lev­eling and firing his brother's ready-cocked revolver.

  And uttered his final plea with a tone of hopeless­ness, as he saw a blur of a movement—the right hand of Edge streaking to the holster and drawing the Colt. The last thing he saw was the spurt of smoke from the muzzle of the revolver. Then he was sprawled out on his back, blood pumping out of his heart to spread a great stain across his shirt front.

  "Sneaky!" Green yelled. "Didn't I tell you them Murphys were sneaky!"

  Edge returned the gun to the holster and gazed bleakly out to where the two horses and the burro had finally come to a halt.

  "But then you ain't exactly ... I don't know what," the old-timer growled, scratching his bald head as he looked at the half-breed. "Comin' all the way down here from across the border on what you knowed was a fool's errand from the start."

  Edge spat into the dust, took off his hat and prodded a finger into one of the two holes in the crown.

  "You really kill your wife, young feller?"

  "Way I see it, I did."

  "But you ain't gonna tell me about it?"

  "It's a long story, feller. Already on the record."

  Green shrugged, then looked at the corpses of the Murphy brothers and asked, "You mind if I don't leave them like that?"

  "Suit yourself," Edge replied and moved back through the gateway into the fort.

  While he saddled his horse, mounted and rode across the debris-littered drill square, he heard a series of thudding sounds, accompanied by a snarling, repetitive monologue by the old-timer.

  "There you bastard! I knowed you killed my boy! I just wished you could feel this! There you bastard! You killed him! For sure you killed him! On Account of you, I ain't got a kin in the world! You killed him. Take that, you bastard!"

  Gradually, he became breathless. The venom went out of his voice and the thudding sounds were less fre­netic.

  As Edge rode out through the gateway, he was in time to see Green stagger from the body of Sean to that of Patrick, the old man's pants legs splashed with blood erupted from the caved-in, almost fleshless-face of the first brother he had stomped. Then, as the half-breed watched, Howie Green began to thud a boot heel down onto the unfeeling head of Patrick, his actions and words as forceful as at the start now that he had a fresh target at which to direct his revenge.

  For two minutes he kept it up, reducing the face of Patrick to the same gruesome pulp as that which made Sean unrecognizable. Then he was through and he reeled away, made it to the side of the gateway before exhaustion caught up with him and he sagged against the wall and slid down it.

  "Sorry, young feller," he gasped as some of the flies he had disturbed at the corpses settled on his blood­stained pants cuffs. "But it was somethin' I felt I just had to do."

  Edge nodded. "Like me, coming down here. No sweat."

  Green raised his head and managed to spread a grin of satisfaction across his ancient face. "Least I got somethin' out of all this." Then he scowled toward the corpses with bloodied heads. "See them yellow punks pay the price for what they done to my boy."

  Edge looked at the dead brothers with cold eyes that perhaps, just for a moment, showed a glimmer of pity. "They bought it sure enough, feller," he muttered. "But it was a lousy deal. With or without Green stamps."